About us

Welcome!

The Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning (LAUP) is one of the four departments located within the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. The other departments are the Department of Architecture, Department of Construction Science and Department of Visualization Sciences. LAUP is one of the oldest and well established departments of its kind in the southern United States. LAUP offers six undergraduate, professional, and research degree programs. These are the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (BLA), Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Planning (BSURPN), Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA), Master of Urban Planning (MUP), Master of Land and Property Development (MLPD), and the Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science (URSC). Over 150 undergraduate students, 100 master’s students, and 50 doctoral students are enrolled full-time in the department.

With over 300 students and 38 stellar faculty, the department has unmatched resources to address all areas related to landscape architecture, urban planning, and land and real estate development. As a unit of the College of Architecture, the department is part of a vibrant teaching and research community that can comprehensively address issues of the built and virtual environment, in conjunction with architecture and construction science. The wider academic family of Texas A&M University is world-renowned for its leadership in teaching, research, and service.

Our Mission and Core Values

LAUP builds upon the foundations of the visions of leadership set by the College to articulate its distinctive mission and vision. LAUP’s mission is to create, apply, and disseminate knowledge to enhance functional, healthy, and sustainable human environments through instruction, research, and service in landscape architecture, urban planning, land development, and allied disciplines. This mission embodies the tri-partite mission of the Texas A&M University---teaching, research, and service. Its vision is to position LAUP as a destination center in region, the United States and beyond for the active creation of, application, and dissemination of knowledge about functional, healthy, and sustainable human environments.

LAUP's mission and vision are embedded in a specific set of core values and defining characteristics that distinguish the department from others in Texas, the region, and beyond. These values and characteristics are lodged in excellence, social commitment, sustainability of environmental and human systems, life-long learning, collaboration, heightened quest for knowledge, innovation, diversity, and community engagement.

Our Students and Faculty

LAUP is committed to offering the best possible learning experiences for all our undergraduate and graduate students. A significant majority of our undergraduate students in LAUP’s BLA program come from Texas, with a small minority from other parts of the United States and beyond. In fact, over 30 percent of registered landscape architects in Texas are former students of the program. Our graduate students come from all over the United States as well as countries such as Algeria, Australia, China, Colombia, India, Iran, Iraq, Korea, and Thailand. LAUP has over 1500 former students, many of whom are leaders in the design, planning, and development fields

LAUP has a group of over 38 stellar faculty and lecturers with a wide varying range of expertise and we continue to grow. In the past two years, we added 10 new faculty members through the University’s Faculty Reinvestment Program. Our faculty comes from a variety of backgrounds. Faculty expertise are varied and include landscape architecture, sustainable urbanism, hazard mitigation, coastal area planning, sustainable design, planning and development, land development, health policy, and transportation. The editor-in-chief of three top-rated journals in landscape architecture, planning, and emergency management are faculty members in LAUP. Many of our faculty members are affiliated with the college-wide research centers especially the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC), the Center for Health System Design, the Center for Housing and Urban Development (CHUD), the Center for Heritage Conservation (CHC), and other university-based units such as the nationally-renowned Texas Transportation Institute (TTI).

Our Location

LAUP is located in the Langford Architecture Center which includes Langford A, Langford B, Langford C, and Jack K. Williams Administration Building at Texas A & M University. Located in College Station, Texas, we benefit from a small community atmosphere while having easy access to four of the 20 largest cities in the United States---Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and San Antonio-Austin.

In conclusion, I invite you to look at our website and learn more about the department, academic programs, faculty, students, staff, and resources.